What the components of a ‘good’ day out on the battlefields? For me it’s simple, good company and ending the day having learned something new. Today tick’s those boxes and more. A gentle cycle out of Ypres onto the N8 where we head towards Sanctury Wood museum and the other memorials in the area. It’s a long cycle off the N8 onto Canada Lane, but it’s a quiet road with very little traffic. After the war, a soldier returned to what was left of his land in and around Sanctury W

It’s a cold, dark and miserable day and the skies are heavy with rain. It’s the first day that has suggested Autumn, so I’m glad we’re in the car. The shortest distance between Albert and Ypres is just 137km but taking that route means you miss out on some of the finest of WW1memorials, and our circuitous route will take to Vimy Ridge, the Notre Dame de Lorette Necropolis, Neuve Chapelle, the Portuguese Military Cemetery, Ploegsteet and Messines Ridge before arriving in Ypres

The crossroads before entering Longueval. To the right, off photo, are the memorials to the Indians and the New Zealanders. Slightly stiff and aching, a hearty breakfast gives us the boost needed for the longer route planned for today. We headed out northeast, to the right of the Albert-Bapaume Road and went towards Contalmaison. People that know the D929 which runs straight between the two towns, will also know that it is a busy road with very little tolerance for slower tra

Day one Day One then, and we set of from the Ibis in Albert, heading the back roads towards our first major stop of the day, the Hawthorne Ridge crater. On our way we stop at Crucifix Corner in Aveluy (1) , where Ivor Gurney, the poet and composer wrote the verse of the same name. A few little uphills later and we arrive at Blighty Valley Cemetery in Authuille. It’s a new one to me: beautifully kept as they all are. Ttoday the gardeners are there making sure the graves are te

The Normandy beaches that made up the D Day landing zones are places of both great beauty and interest and while the excellent books on the subject can meet the interest, it is only being there that you can appreciate the huge, complicated and ultimately successful endeavour undertaken by the Allies on 6 June 1944.  It is while standing on one of the vantage points above Arromanches-les-Bains or Omaha that the scale of the operation becomes clear and the years of planning pri

The first day of the Battle of the Somme in 1916, 1 July, was so grim that many people forget that it went on until 18 November, and that it comprised a number of smaller battles during the five months duration. One of those battles was the one for Delville Wood, or Devils Wood, which sits just east of the village of Longueval and which, at the time, was 156 acres of mostly beech and hornbeam and a very dense undergrowth. Difficult fighting territory. The Battle of Delville W

The Roll of Honour of the black South African soldiers buried in France numbers 445.* It starts with the driver J Lutas buried in the Abbeville Communal Cemetery Extension and ends with Lance Corporal Alpheus Zwane buried at Arques-La-Bataille Military Cemetery in Deppe. It includes the name of 3009 Private Beleza Myengwa, buried at the Bleville Community Cemetery just north of Le Harve, but in June 2014 exhumed and re-interred at the South African Memorial at Dellville Wood.

In the centre of Bernièrs-sur-Mer there is an Inukshuk which was erected by the town hall in memory of First National Canadians who died during the D-Day landings. 359 Canadian soldiers died on Juno Beach that day, and it is believed that 33 of them were First National Canadians. (First Nations are one of three recognised Indigenous Peoples in Canada, along with Inuit and Métis, and include Status and non-Status Indians.) Accompanying the structure are the words ‘Inushuk, mad

Squadron Leader JJ (Chris) Le Roux As well as being one of the best preserved of the Atlantik Wall fortifications, and well worth a visit to see the perfection position it held between Omaha and Gold beaches, the battery at Longues-sur-Mer is also home to Advanced Landing Ground B11, which the allies had operational by 26 June 1944, a mere 19 days after taking the battery itself. It was from this airfield that South African pilot Jacobus Johannes Le Roux, as commander of the

First walk finished, and it's time for coffee at the famous café. The first building to be liberated in France on D Day, the café remains in the hands of the original family. Inside, a treasure trove of memorabilia. See the Walking the D Day Beaches page for details of the tour. https://www.untoldww1.com/about

The original site of St Paul’s School in Hammersmith became the headquarters of the 21st Army Group under the command of General Montgomery, and it was here that the Allied commanders, led by Eisenhower and Montgomery planned the invasion and liberation of German-occupied Europe, including the D-Day landings. King George V1 and Winston Churchill visited them here to approve the plans on 15 May 1944. (Copyright: St Paul’s) The Boardroom at St Paul’s, 1 February 1944:  L-R, fro

Photo: Author's own Of the 60 million shells fired in the battle of Verdun during the 300 days and nights in 1916 about one in eight of them remained unexploded in this tract of land outside the city. The government declared this 10 000-hectare area a red zone, or ‘zone rouge’; part of the larger 150 000- hectare area stretching from the North Sea to the Swiss border: Its destruction so absolute it was considered not fit for human or animal habitation and too expensive to cle

If you step out onto the beach at Asnelle in the fog and in the trough of the low tide, you get to see the unusual and irregular shapes of remnants of Mulberry Harbour B that won’t be visible again for 12 hours, and then only if there is light, and, if you happen to be on the beach. Lesser known than Arromanches-Les-Bains, the beach commonly associated with the Mulberry Harbour, Asnelle was the eastern edge of the facility imagined by Lord Mountbatten, given the go-ahead by C

Copywrite Imperial War Museum Q4866 The Labour Corps of WWI Note: The stories of the individual labour corps are detailed in separate blogs. On 21 February 1917, in heavy pre-dawn fog near the Isle of Wight, the British merchant ship Darro  collided with the SS Mendi . On board the Mendi  were 823 men from the 5th Battalion, South African Native Labour Corps. Tragically, 650 of them perished that night. These men were heading to the Western Front, not to fight, but to work. T

Photo: Author's own A recent and unrelated trip to Uganda gave me a chance to investigate how locals – specifically soldiers of the King’s Africa Rifles are remembered for their role in the East Africa campaign. There were about 4200 deaths during the war, with a further 3 000 due to disease. It is unknown how many of these deaths are Ugandans, but it is fair to assume that they are many and I was looking for any sign that these men’s deaths had not gone unnoticed. Sadly, the